Experts say it could take a year or more to get the Libyan oil industry up and exporting again.
Much the same as Libya before Gadaffi. There are two big tribal groupings in Libya. Previous to Muammar, peace be upon him, the other group, under King Idris, held power. The there was a coup and the Arab world’s most interesting dresser took power. Now the idris grouping will retake power, backed mightily by the US whose corporations will be more handsomely rewarded with oil development concessions than under the previous regime. There’ll be lots of talk about democracy and new constitutions but come on, look how the Arab Spring is currently working out elsewhere.
This is fiction and fantasy. The King Idris was from a Sufi group of national reach, the Sannusi Zaouia, he was not a tribal leader. This fantasy and bad faith fiction that an Idris group is taking power. We have already seen Tripoli and the towns of the West spend their blood in uprising against Qadafi. It is a gross bit of propaganda or believing propaganda, this story.
Yes, look. What do you know in fact? You speak Arabic? In Tunisia they are preparing elections and the progress made is good.
I guess the question that arises now is, does the National Transitional Council – a kind of self-organized, volunteer government (as revolutionary governments generally are) – have the legitimacy/popularity to govern the country until elections can be held?
But Idris was supported by the tribes who ran the show under him but were on the outs under Gadaffi. And while it isn’t an exact match but the pro-Idris tribes/areas who did very poorly under Gadaffi are now the rebels overthrowing him. So it’s plus ca change basically.
They’re preparing elections in Egypt too and the existing power structure along with billions of dollars of US money and expertise is doing everything it can to put a new government face on the same old elite structure.
From an interview with Gilbert Achcar, a prof at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London:
!!! The bolded part – bad idea! See the Self Denying Ordinance.
This is again a ficiton you have written, because it is clear you speak no arabic and you are just telling a story. The rising of the cities in the West, where hundreds of native citizens have died make show this to be fiction told for some political point of view, a simple narrative.
There is not any connexion between the support to Idris and the opposition to Qadafi now, which is east and west which we have seen from the people dying themselves, despite the inventions of propaganda.
Oh yes, everything USA, USA, the centre of the world.
The Egyptians power is from the Egyptian currents. The Americans are not making the Brotherhood and the Salafistes powerful, and they are not happy. The Americans are still writing cheques because they do not know how else to keep Suez open, but they are not controling the Egyptian politics. They are riding the wave only.
Of course people who are just getting story telling in English will believe other things.
Ramira, if you don’t mind, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? You’ve clearly got a lot to tell us, and you certainly appear to be someone whose first language is not english.
Mahmoud Jibril tours the capitals of Europe in effort to get Libyan state funds unfrozen. (Jibril is the Chairman of the Executive Board of the NTC – the nearest thing Libya has to a prime minister at the moment.) It should happen soon, I expect.
I’ve taken a keen interest in the Middle East for over thirty years, since back when I was going to school in England with a lot of the sons of various players in the region. I’ve got ongoing friendships with people from the region since I was eight or nine years old and i’m forty two now. I’ve forgotten more about the Middle East than some “experts” you see quoted in the media know about it. I bet I know people from more countries and have been to more Middle Eastern countries than you have.
I stand by my argument that the majority of the rebels are groups who were in the ascendancy under the previous regime. No area in Libya or anywhere else is going to be monolithically pro-one particular group so people dying fighting Gadaffi in the west of Libya means nothing.
I’m interested to see just how much power the Brothers, peace be upon them, and the other currents can muster against the combined might of Egypt’s existing army-based power structure and its US backing. I’d be delighted to see an outbreak of freedom in Egypt or anywhere else but I wouldn’t put any money on it.
Most of the quote I am taking this from is suffering from the logical fallacy “Appeal from Authority”, if I’m not mistaken.
But the bit I’m curious about, in regards the quote I’ve selected, is if you would feel the same way if it was a pro-Western, or even gasp a pro-US freedom?
Or is that mutually exclusive?
So far there has been some looting, at least at the Bab al-Aziziya complex. However, “Elsewhere in Tripoli, rebels supervised the collection of government office equipment to save it from looters.”
Seeing as how the US propped up the Mubarak regime and pretty much every other Arab despot for the last half century plus and the colonial powers like Britain and france have such an interesting history in the region, exactly how likely is it that there would be an outbreak of pro-US or western sentiment in Egypt or elsewhere in the region?
So yes, it’s mutually exclusive. I’d love to see you make an argument that there could be a substantial outbreak of pro-US/western sentiment somewhere over there.
At least they got rid of that dumb old green flag. Who has a flag that is just green with nothing else on it? That’s just dumb 
Exactly that is very likely now, in Libya.
UN “plan for post-Gaddafi Libya” leaked.
Sounds good. I guess.
There’ll be some choreographed stuff for the TV cameras but any Libyan government elected by its people will want Libyan control over its natural resources and not want them handed on a plate to US oil companies, ironically the thing Gaddafi was most famous for doing when he took power. US backing of Israel’s ongoing unpleasantness with the Palestinians will cause anti-US sentiment too, and don’t forget a big chunk of the rebel army are Islamic fundamentalists, a lot of whom were fighting against us in Iraq – Libya was the biggest Arab source of the foreign foghters who were part of the Iraqi insurgency. Arab distrust and dislike of US foreign policies in its region have never been at higher levels than they are now, even during the Bush invasion of Iraq.
I think you need some citations for… well, every sentence, really. The NATO campaign built up a ton of good will in Libya (and possibly elsewhere in the MENA). More to the point, the West doesn’t need “natural resources… handed on a plate to US oil companies” —it has an interest in having the oil sold to them. The issue with Qaddafi was, he generally took the money he made selling oil and put it in Swiss bank accounts, etc., rather than spending it on his people.
In the late sixties Gaddafi actually managed to get bigger increases in royalties from US oil companies than the creation of OPEC did. He actually caused OPEC to renegotiate almost all of its natioanl concessions. Gaddafi then started nationalising Libyan oilfields and this was the first of the wave of nationalisation of Middle Eastern oil that we saw over the next few years. Whether the next regime gives more of the revenue to the Libyan people rather than on itself remains to be seen. I can’t see there being much of a difference when it all settles down again. There’ll be a scramble for Libyan oil from all over the world now, lets’ see whether US companies don’t want to be part of it.
Mm. The people who are going to be screwed here are the Russians. Libyans are very aware of how little Russia wanted to help, and Russia had some fairly large investments.